Pasco School District aims to avoid first-day bus woes

The Pasco County School District is asking parents to confirm their addresses, preferably by Friday﻿. The information will allow officials to design school bus routes earlier than usual, to help avoid chaos in the fall. Times files

The Pasco County School District is asking parents to confirm their addresses, preferably by Friday. The information will allow officials to design school bus routes earlier than usual, to help avoid chaos in the fall.

Routes would be set by June 27, with no changes before Sept. 2.

"We want to make it more efficient for the beginning of school," district spokeswoman Linda Cobbe said.

This past August, superintendent Kurt Browning and his staff were inundated with complaints about buses that ran late, changed stops and otherwise frustrated parents.

Browning dismissed explanations that the stumbles were "no different than last year" as poor excuses, and pledged better. He assigned Ray Gadd and Ray Bonti, two top deputies, to investigate operating problems within the transportation department and recommend changes.

Meetings with parents and employees revealed several areas where the district could fix procedures to handle issues that Gadd deemed predictable.

One of the first changes came in the area of route planning.

In the past, the district would alter bus routes until the first day of school. Bonti has said as many as 4,000 last-minute changes were made in previous years, giving drivers little chance to learn the roads and causing parents angst as they took their children to stops that no longer existed.

It shouldn't happen anymore.

For the coming school year, the district will get bus route information to families by the end of classes June 3, and freeze the routes three weeks later.

"If your child does not have bus transportation arranged prior to the June 27 deadline, you will have to either choose the closest existing stop or you will have to provide your child's transportation to and from school for the first 10 days," transportation director Gary Sawyer wrote in a letter that will go home to parents on Monday.

He encouraged parents to have all address information, including moves, to the district as soon as possible.

"Our goal is to provide your child with the best and safest transportation service possible. Accurate information in our database will help avoid delays at the start of the new school year," he wrote.

Other initiatives also are in the works.

Several district employees have been trained on a new computer system that will track buses as they arrive and depart schools, and students as they climb on and off buses. That information will be collected at schools and sent to the district office, where a group of employees will work a phone bank dedicated to busing questions.

The call center, similar to one in Hillsborough County, comes in response to parent criticisms that they could not get information about their children as they arrived home from school an hour or more later than scheduled.

TAMPA — "Elevate," a Hillsborough County School District initiative that was to focus on seven troubled schools and use them as models for dozens more, is becoming but a memory as the district seeks instead to support all schools equally."We’re more ...

TAMPA — Students at Plant High School honored the victims of the Parkland school shooting with a series of sidewalk chalk messages.The chalk art carried a series of messages such as "How many times?" and "Do something. Protect us." according to a Fac...

While fielding calls from anxious parents after the Broward County high school shooting that claimed 17 lives, school officials in the Tampa Bay area took a close look Thursday at what they are doing to keep students safe.There are gates and locks an...

Assuming April Griffin follows through on her decision not to seek re-election to the Hillsborough County School Board, well, meetings just won’t be the same. Chances are they’ll just be filled with boring reports, proclamations and routine business....

A St. Petersburg High teacher has retired in the middle of the school year after students said he called them "baby," "babe," "missy," "honey," "sweetie," "little girl" and ended one girl’s name with "-licious."The Pinellas County school district fou...

BROOKSVILLE — Less than a month after taking over as interim principal at long-struggling Moton Elementary School, Brent Gaustad says teamwork by educators across the district has things looking up.Behavior has improved, he said, and innovative proce...

PARKLAND — An American nightmare unfolded Wednesday afternoon at a South Florida high school after police say an expelled teenager returned to campus and opened fire with an assault rifle, killing 17 and wounding 15 more in the worst school shooting ...

TAMPA — Claudette Wilson and Annella Fender are sisters from Jamaica who did everything together.They both taught at Dowdell Middle School — one English, the other reading. They played tennis on Saturdays. After their match, they would work on their ...

TAMPA — The University of South Florida System’s long-serving leader will again stand to make about $925,000 in pay and deferred compensation under her proposed contract renewal.If approved, President Judy Genshaft’s contract will provide for about $...

Recently adopted law that gives parents and other residents more opportunities to review and challenge school instructional materials has sparked the Pasco County School Board to take a closer look at how it deals with such situations.The board last ...

This section focuses on Florida education news. We cover Pinellas County schools, Hillsborough County schools, Pasco County schools, Hernando County schools and Florida schools statewide. It's all here on our education page: newspaper articles on education, education blog articles, as well as in-depth coverage of state testing and other issues affecting schools, both in Tampa Bay and across Florida.